CATAWBA ISLAND - The algae problem facing this area is neither new nor unique to Lake Erie.

Different water bodies from across the country have dealt with harmful algal blooms for decades, and continue to do so.

One of the first steps in that process is to pinpoint the causes, and for some, many of the same sources of the problem sound familiar to those following it here.

Excess phosphorus, largely from agricultural runoff during heavy rains, overloads the lake with nutrients leading to the harmful blooms.

For Lake Erie, the problem has only been getting worse, despite significant conservation efforts to reduce phosphorus pollution.

Some areas have taken it a step further, declaring their respective affected watersheds “impaired,” a designation outlined in the Clean Water Act that triggers an extensive assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency and eventually the formulation of a recovery plan.

In order to ensure the plan is effectively implemented, there is strict enforcement regarding the amount of pollutants permitted to be drained into the lake, called its “total maximum daily load” (TMDL), a standard that crosses state lines.

The "impaired" designation is a step not yet taken for Lake Erie’s western basin, but it has been increasingly discussed as a possibility.

The Lake Erie Improvement Association (LEIA) asked the question: What can we learn from others that have been tackling algae and phosphorus issues similar to ours, with one key difference, having the advantage of TMDLs?

Green Bay and the Lower Fox River Basin in Wisconsin were examples of just that.

In a December panel, LEIA hosted Greg Baneck, a county conservationist at the Outagamie County Land Conservation Department in Wisconsin, who worked first-hand on their TMDL projects and the implementation.

“A lot of what I’m hearing about going on in Lake Erie, we’re having the same problems in Green Bay,” Baneck said. “We’ve got point-source issues and non-point-source issues.”

Point sources are a single, easily identifiable sources of pollution, such as a drain pipe. Baneck noted this leads their measured discharge to be fairly static.

Non-point source, however, is pollution from a much wider area and is harder to attribute to an exact spot. It also is more easily affected by rainfall and snowmelt, with measurements “all over the board.”

The Wolf River and Fox River both drain down through into the pool lakes, through Lake Winnebago, over a dam and then into Green Bay. That small 10 percent area delivers 42 percent of the phosphorus to the whole 6,400-square-mile watershed.

Because of the high prevalence of agriculture and other non-point issues, Baneck said, there were 27 water bodies, or separate stream segments, that were identified as “impaired” in the Lower Rox River Basin.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources lumped all of those small water bodies into one larger TMDL for Green Bay and the lower Fox River. The process for creating that TMDL plan was initiated in 2006 and completed in 2012.

Part of that process was measuring the total phosphorus load to the bay, establishing the baseline, then identifying what levels were needed in order to return to fishable, swimmable, usable water.

Once the TMDL establishes the target, Baneck said, they are then capable of properly allocating that load out to the different components within the basin.

“So, without the plan, how are you going to allocate who’s going to get what discharge within the basin?”

With the TMDL plan there, the next step is implementation of conservation practices to reach the reduction target.

The sheer price of the facility upgrades, which can exceed several hundred million dollars for some, led to the other options with the hope that they will buy time as technology costs drop.

Adaptive management allows them to instead reinvest money into non-point source practices in a matching sub-watershed.

Similarly, the “multi-discharger variance” sets a dollar amount per pound being discharged over permitted levels and reinvests that money to the county conservation departments, which in turn use it to implement non-point source practices.

“The caveat there is they aren’t off the hook,” Baneck said. “They still have to, at some point, upgrade their plant.”

‘The non-point dilemma’

“It’s much easier to control things coming out the end of pipe than it is to put a Band-Aid on everything else coming off the landscape.”

Baneck said about 90 percent of his time is spent working with agricultural producers so they can collaboratively come up with solutions, finding the “best bang for the buck,” and building positive working relationships.

Part of the TMDL process was to survey farmers about who they trust and are willing to rely on, and the conservation department was at the top of the list.

The basin was broken down into smaller, more manageable, roughly 30,000-acre sub-watersheds.

They were then able to use all of their modeling and sampling data gathering during the TMDL process to rank each of them based on the amount of phosphorus being discharged into the Lower Fox.

Then, for each of those sub-watersheds individually, they developed plans with “nine key elements.” Baneck described those plans as individual “blueprints” to get the reductions needed for each respectively.

The significance of the “nine key elements” plans, also outlined by the EPA, is that it makes them eligible for federal funding.

Baneck considers that one of the most important takeaways from the entire planning process, as it is the largest source of funds available to actually implement the reduction practices.

The Plum and Kankapot Creeks watershed, located in the southeast corner of the basin, is their highest deliverer of phosphorus.

In 2014, they applied for a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant and were awarded $4.6 million to begin implementation of the nine key elements plan for that watershed.

The cost of the full implementation is still estimated to be about $11 million, but Baneck said they had a good start thanks to the grant.